Why Are We in Ukraine? | Hacker News Reader

Why Are We in Ukraine?

harpers.org

20 pointsthemgt13 comments

Why is it that some people in the USA refuse to ascribe agency to their allies? A large reason that NATO didn't dissolve and also expanded was that the Europeans (possibly not the French) wanted it. Especially Eastern Europeans.

As a Brit it's clear to me that US hegemony is essential to my countries economy, the US needs the trade lanes to be open, so does the UK... but only the US has the navy to keep them open. This means that the alliance is very much of benefit to the weaker memebers.

Ok, sometimes I have seen the arrogance and corruption of the US when dealing with junior partners. It's clear we can't win big at the tables without someone strong arming us off. But, we are allowed to play the big folks game and will a bit, and we are allowed to play in games that the big folks aren't interested in. This was not the case for junior partners in previous hegemonic arrangements. We should be (and are) grateful. That's why NATO is at the gate... because it's nicer than the other options.

> Why is it that some people in the USA refuse to ascribe agency to their allies?

Motivated reasoning. Those of us who aren't shills for Russia see the sovereignty of our allies as a key differentiator between NATO goals and Russia goals.

> Why is it that some people in the USA refuse to ascribe agency to their allies?

It is way of thinking called Realism. See Kraut's video on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXmwyyKcBLk

You can have a realist political perspective and still understand that other nuclear-armed powers with massive, global economies and cutting edge militaries with force projection capabilities also have agency in world affairs.

So we should arm everyone with nukes, so everyone can have agency. Sounds fair.

An exhausting read that bends over backwards to argue the West need to make major concessions to Russia or risk nuclear war.

Yep. It's a diatribe of self-righteous utopianism. Ukraine provides a second Afghanistan to topple Putin. There is zero chance for Putin to win militarily. Putin has become a hermit authoritarian in a hermit kingdom. Unlike the DPRK, those around Putin will tire of the losses in treasure and lives, and the lack of openness with the rest of the world. My thinking is that most in Russia will go along with the status quo so long as there is not an expansion into other countries or use of nuclear weapons. Putin may instead do other things such as deploy very large conventional weapons and attack critical civilian infrastructure that cannot be easily replaced. Giving the order to use nuclear weapons would likely cause a mutiny because of the understanding of the consequences in the field, at home, and globally.

Oh, it's all the fault of NATO expansion, is it?

One teeny tiny but ever so important little detail: NATO ISN'T INVADING ANYONE. Russia is. Just because Putin feels entitled to lebensraum doesn't put anyone under moral obligation to appease him.

While “NATO isn’t invading anyone” may be your honest interpretation of recent history, the article discusses NATO activity in the former Yugoslavia and Libya as examples of NATO force being used. The article also briefly mentions the color revolutions supported by the US, a NATO stalwart.

The article places the potential miscalculation of NATO expansion within a historical context of cold wars nukes in general and especially within the context of the bellicose reaction of the US causing what is called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally the article gives details of intra-NATO misgivings about the effects of expansion on Russia.

There aren’t easy answers to the trolley question of “appeasement.” If the decision is to accept Ukrainians dying now in place of maybe more of other nations dying later, then better understanding the likelihood and likely scope of the latter is needed. If Ukrainians are dying now out of impatience to join a military compact, then that is a tragedy that has come from a trajectory that should be studied.

Whats the point of posting an article whatabouting a flawed, but successful liberal democracy (us) with a cleprocratic shithole?

Also, why do so many bloggers have the need to be "contrarian" to common sense? for clicks?

Imagine aliens are attacking us. One would still find people defending the alias and finding arguments to do so...

But Luo Ji committed mundicide! We need a less aggressive Swordholder!

Self-reflection and even self-critique are important. But not at the expense of defending or making excuses for outright hostility and genocide on the part of others.

> Self-reflection and even self-critique are important.

Agreed 100%

This article has a huge blind spot, one that seems very common among the foreign policy / international relations academic-media crowd - namely, there's zero discussion of the economic conflict and the failure of the 'economic integration program' that the US and Britain were pushing in Russia in the 1990s and which broke down around 2003. (Some authors have discussed the economic relationship between business and government in the context of international relations more broadly, see William Manchester's "Arms of Krupp" (1968), Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" (1990) and Steve Coll's "Private Empire" (2012)).

This economic-centric timeline looks a lot different from that in the article:

2003 Putin rejects the ExxonMobil bid for >50% ownership take in Yukos, and imprisons the Russian oligarch Khodorkovsky who was most closely affiliated with the deal. This really seems like the beginning of a major split:

https://carnegieendowment.org/2005/07/12/what-does-yukos-aff...

2008 The Russia-Georgia conflict takes off, in a kind of preview of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, at least partially related to a pipeline dispute but also a demonstration of the continuing major rift between the US and Russia:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/11/georgia.russia...

2010 The roots of the conflict in Syria seems to come from around this date, with the US trying to get Assad to cut ties with Iran and Russia and agree to gas pipelines for transporting Qatar/Saudi gas towards Europe:

https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/is-the-fight-over-...

This leads onto the setup for the Ukraine war, linked to the fracking boom in the USA, which has the potential to replace Russian gas in Europe (above source):

> "Last year US President Barack Obama spoke openly about the need for Europe to reduce its reliance on Russian gas following the conflict in Ukraine. The US also wants to use its own natural gas supply, recently developed through fracking, to undercut Russian supply. But it will be years before the US will be in a position to ship this overseas."

This sets the stage for the 2014 'governmental transition' in Ukraine, the split of Crimea to Russia, and the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, which eventually escalates into today's war.

This economic perspective is perhaps unpopular because it does look a bit like two organized drug cartels fighting over who gets to profit from selling cocaine (natural gas) to Europe, and is pretty banal (no good guys to cheer on). However, it's a very plausible argument and the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline (probably US-orchestrated) and the implementation of (attempted) global sanctions on Russian gas exports all fit this narrative rather well.

The other part of the economic argument is that wars are profitable for the global military-industrial sector, which is closely linked to governments in both Russia and the USA, and any prolonged period of peace drastically reduces demand for their products. Again, this is not a good look for governments who claim to be defending human rights and democracy and looking out for the interests of their people.

TLDR: it's all about money, guns and oil, and it always has been, from the early 20th century onwards.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com